101 Black Portraits

A stunning volume composed of visual and written portraits of Black activists and athletes, artists and poets, trailblazers and teachers, militants and pacifists, pastors and politicians, major celebrities and people who never sought attention but found themselves caught up in a movement nonetheless. 

In 2020, after the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, Seattle artist Jeff Benesi began painting portraits of African Americans who have played a part in the story of the struggle for social and racial justice in the United States. Sitting with these people’s stories while painting their likenesses from photographs that moved him became part of his process of self-education and self-reflection on opportunities he’d missed to be part of that struggle himself. His reading took him from one personal history to another and one striking image to the next, until he had painted over a hundred portraits in this series. 

Wanting to invite visitors to his gallery shows into a similar journey, Benesi enlisted Seattle writer Jenn Cavanaugh to craft short biographical sketches for each of the people in his portraits. Together, they selected quotes for each person depicted so that their voices would be represented as well as their faces and stories. They hope this collaboration will spark curiosity, keep the conversation moving forward, and inspire and encourage others to recognize opportunities to work for justice in their own ways. 

Portraits include Dred Scott, Sojourner Truth, Fredrick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall, Robert Johnson, Mahalia Jackson, Rosa Parks, Ralph Ellison, Billie Holiday, Jacob Lawrence, Fannie Lou Hamer, Nelson Mandela, Jackie Robinson, Betty Reid Soskin, Fred Shuttlesworth, Naomi Long Madgett, James Baldwin, Shirley Chisholm, Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, Medgar Evers, Opal Lee, Harry Belafonte, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, John Perkins, Odetta, Toni Morrison, Desmond Tutu, Dick Gregory, Nina Simone, Quincy Jones, Bill Russell, Bob Moses, Claudette Colvin, Marvin Gaye, Emmett Till, Huey Newton, Aretha Franklin, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, and many others. 

30% of sales proceeds will be donated to NAACP Empowerment Programs.

“At a time when others are working to make parts of this history disappear, Jeff Benesi and Jenn Cavanaugh are doing the opposite: they are preserving it. They are putting these people in front of us—their faces, their names, their words, their stories. This book is their way of saying: You will not erase them. And in doing so, they remind us of something worth repeating: there is no American history without Black history.”

-Suzzanne Lacey

Founder and Executive Director, Museum Without Walls